core

I was talking to someone recently who told me about a friend whose dad had been stricken with Alzheimer’s. The dad had been a man of action, but as his abilities faded he found himself bewildered because there was nothing for him to do. Who was he? What was left inside? He had never paid attention to his inner life, so he was losing his sense of himself. And he was becoming a very difficult person to be around.

A couple of weeks ago when Natasha Richardson died very unexpectedly, I saw a replay of a 1998 interview in which she said she thought of herself as an “overweight unattractive teenager.” The world was mourning the loss of a beautiful actress, but they couldn’t see beyond the outer self.

Who am I inside? The great men and women of Christian spirituality urge us to cultivate our inner life. The foundation of Christian spirituality is listening prayer. And at the heart of listening prayer is hearing God say he loves us. I need to hear the Father’s voice, telling me I am his beloved. My inner self is not what I do or have accomplished. At my very core I must know that I am God’s and that he loves me.

Cultivating is a farming metaphor. It takes time and energy to break up the ground, to remove the weeds, to make it hospitable to life. And then it takes time for the plants to grow and to bear fruit. But if I don’t want to end up lacking an inner life, if I want to be characterized by love, joy and peace (the fruit of the Spirit), then there’s no time like the present to start cultivating my inner life.